68 posts categorized "CYNDI LAUPER"

Last night was the fourth annual Cyndi Lauper & Friends Home for the Holidays concert to benefit her True Colors Fund. The lineup was so eclectic as to almost be off-putting; we're so used to compartmentalized music it seemed jarring to consider hearing Cyndi, Metric, Sufjan Stevens, 50 Cent, Nataline Maines and Salt-N-Pepa all on one bill.

The full set list, courtesy of Gregory Pace

But the diversity of artists led to a long, fun, interesting show, one spiked with equal parts good cheer and defiance.

“Twenty-three women in their seventies just woke up and thought, 'What should I do today? Go to Target, or fuck up Bill Cosby's life?' I say he's guilty, and it's sad because it's like a death: We lost Joan, we lost Robin, and we lost Bill Cosby. That's what it feels like to me.”

The crowd approved. But there was a mixed response when she invoked the Hands Up, Don't Shoot! and I Can't Breathe populist outrage that protesters not far away were expressing—some boos, some oohs, some cheers. O'Donnell was perplexed.

Come and get it come and get it come and get it...actual journal pages of mind from my teen years.

When you're as obsessive a journal-writer as I was—I wrote in one every day for probably 12 or more years—you eventually hit the need for filler. On one particularly morbid day in the life of a morbidly obese teenager, I decided to write down all the songs I wanted played at my funeral.

I'm not sure what gloomy thoughts I was having to make me feel so ready to...go into the light...but the songs are pretty hysterical. Was it my intention to force “Need a Man Blues” on my grieving extended family as a way of rubbing their noses in who the real Matthew was? (Horny, vindictive.)

And just imagine the people glancing at their watches during “Paninaro”.

I'm sure that Goonies soundtrack song would've provided great solace.

Not to mention the sheer timing of it all...there are about 80 songs (and many, many more), so that would have mourners seated for well over two hours, just listening to, you know, Grace Jones, Gene Loves Jezebel and the more traditional Madonna-and-Cyndi-Lauper combo.

I had so much fun during my visit to Larry Flick's Sirius XM radio show today, during which he was counting down the top gay anthems ever as part of Proud & Loud:A Celebration of Gay Anthems. Spoiler alert: “I Will Survive” came out on top, and yet as we all know, those on the bottom are often just as interesting, if not more.

Case in point, the countdown also featured songs by The Weather Girls and Melba Moore, and both Martha Wash and Ms. Moore were in attendance. It was especially cool that Martha was there, because Larry had invited Anthony Wayne, Jacqueline B. Arnold and Anastacia McCleskey, the cast of Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical, to sing two of the late, great disco diva's best-ever tunes. Martha being one half of the original Weather Girls meant she'd be watching people acting out a sliver of her own personal history.

When Cher took the Dressed to Kill stage, the venue throbbed like the main artery in the middle of the guiltiest pleasure ever. She appeared beneath a gigantic set of pheasant feathers, adorned in more glitzy accoutrements than one could make from an entire discount bead store. And wearing dreads, a la Cleopatra. Her smile had that inimitable “I know, right?” quality that resides midway between intentional camp and an unapologetic love of all things tacky.

Bird of a feather

The showgirl had arrived.

She opened the concert with “Woman's World,” her mostly dismissed lead single from her latest album, Closer to the Truth. Heard months after its release as a kick-off tune, it sounds a lot better. Like quite a few of the numbers, it was done to track, but was sold hard by Cher via her facial expressions and easy flaunting of her costume.

A bold Cher-'do

She segued seamlessly (or, considering that bold costume, seamfully) into her scandalously underplayed 1998 release “Strong Enough,” which was lost on radio in the wake of “Believe.” Her gladiator-garbed backup dancers bounced around the stage with zero of the coolness of most divas' dancers; it wasn't about being cool, it was about being outrageous and flashy and inciting fun.

The projection behind her resembled a cheesy, vintage electronic one-armed bandit in all its 8bit glory.

Sixty-eight???

Probably the least satisfying aspect of the show was the fact that in order to accommodate the myriad of costume changes, Cher spent a lot of time offstage while her dancers distracted us; it felt like there were several instances in which she sang only one song before disappearing to do a medium-quick change. But this allowed for spectacles like what came next, a gaudy, blood-red, vampire-themed “Dressed to Kill,” an album track from the latest CD.

I've never seen a full Cher concert. #gayshame Or rather, I'd never seen one—until Friday, when I rectified that grave oversight.

I loved Cher when I was a kid, staying up past my bedtime to watch her endlessly entertaining, kitschapalooza of a variety show with Sonny, then lost interest when her promising acting career (Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and Silkwood are amazing) became a bit mainstream for my taste. I snapped out of my Cher love when she hit her schlock-rock/infomercial/Madonna-bashing phase.

Bitch is so grounded, she does her own lighting!

But over the years, Cher has won me back time and again. I personally don't see her as a compelling artist so much as a true original, which can be just as transfixing and important in its own way. She is a personality always worth listening to and watching. And I've thoroughly enjoyed both her Twitter proclamations and her post-“Believe” disco, the latter of which I believe is far superior to at least some of the music she made during the original Disco Era.